1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is in the field of telephony communications and pertains particularly to methods and apparatus for predicting future agent redness for handling an interaction in a call center.
2. Discussion of the State of the Art
In the field of telephony there are call centers that operate on behalf of companies that provide consumer goods and/or services to a base of consumers. A call center may be defined as an association of telecommunications equipment and live personal reserved for interacting with customers of one or more companies represented by the call center.
A state-of-art call center can handle telephone calls over a connection oriented switched telephone network and data network telephony (DNT) calls over an Internet protocol (IP) network. A call center typically includes a local area network (LAN) that supports agent appliances used for interaction. An agent appliance is generally a LAN-connected computer with a graphics user interface (GUI) running a client interface application. A telephone handset or headset is also part of the communication equipment used by an agent in interaction with customers. Telephones may be COST telephones or IP-based telephones.
Agents having similar training or skills are grouped together by association in some call centers for the purpose of working on specific call center campaigns. Outbound calling campaigns are one such campaign type that uses a group of focused call center agents. In an outbound calling campaign, a predicted number of outbound calls are placed, typically by an automated outbound dialer to customer telephone numbers provided by a list. Outbound calls are placed in batches at various periods throughout the duration of the campaign. Customers who answer calls placed by an outbound contact server may be routed to available call center agents as incoming calls for treatment. In many cases an interactive voice response (IVR) system is used to prompt customers who answer calls to wait a short period for a next available live agent. Once the customer is connected to the live agent an opportunity for conducting a transaction exists for the call center.
One challenge with outbound calling campaigns, especially when automated dialing systems are used, is predicting a best number of outbound calls to dial at any given dialing interval during the campaign. Probability theory is used in many predictive dialing operations to attempt to determine what a good number of outbound calls will be given a number of available agents. There is a probability that a percentage of calls placed will not be answered by a human. There is a probability that a percentage of calls placed and answered by customers will drop out of queue to be considered abandoned calls.
Two key principles that should be maintained during the campaign are that customers do not wait long to be connected to a live agent and that agents do not wait too long to receive a next call. A higher percentage of agent utilization in interaction handling for outbound call campaigns is desired in a call center environment, but many of the conventional means for determining agent readiness to handle a call, such as current predictive algorithms used in routing, fail to account for preliminary information about the status of the agent such as when a busy agent will be considered ready to take a call. Over dialing rate can rise beyond an acceptable level, call abandonment rate increases beyond an acceptable level, and agent utilization percentage becomes lower.
Therefore, what is clearly needed is a system and methods for placing outbound calls for connection to live agents that accounts for numbers of agents that are not available, but may be available by the time that outbound calls are answered.